Western Europe Archive

From Lebanon and Iraq to Ecuador and Chile, popular protests have shaken governments and captured the imagination of pundits worldwide in the past few weeks. Combined with the mass demonstrations that forced regimes in Algeria and Sudan to cast aside longtime leaders earlier this year, as well as the Yellow Vest movement that stunned France from December 2018 through the late spring, some observers are wondering whether we are witnessing a revolutionary moment of global proportions. Has popular dissatisfaction with the unfair distribution of globalization’s spoils reached a tipping point? Or are these protests locally driven, offering little or no […]

Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa and his ruling Socialist Party scored a solid victory in parliamentary elections earlier this month, capturing roughly 37 percent of the vote and expanding their plurality in parliament from 86 to 106 seats. However, the Socialists fell short of the 116 seats needed for a majority, and are foregoing the formal support agreements with smaller left-leaning parties that allowed them to govern over the past four years. That means they will have to negotiate with other parties on an ad hoc basis in order to enact legislation. In an email interview with WPR, Sofia Serra-Silva, […]

Despite saying that he would “rather be dead in a ditch” than delay Brexit, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was forced to do just that late Saturday night, sending a letter to the European Commission requesting another extension for the United Kingdom’s long-awaited departure from the European Union. As with two earlier delays, the core challenges to resolving Brexit remain avoiding a highly disruptive, “no-deal” exit; keeping the Irish land border open; and defining trade relationships with the EU and the rest of the world that mitigate the costs of leaving the world’s largest customs union. The British Parliament refused […]

BERLIN—When Walter Luebcke, the president of a regional council in the central German state of Hesse, was found lying on his porch with a bullet wound to his head in early June, investigators initially resisted the notion that the shooting was connected to his work as a politician. Luebcke had spent the evening sitting outside, within earshot of a festival taking place in his hometown of Istha that night. His son found him, after returning home from the festival, and called the paramedics. Luebcke died in the hospital a few hours later. For years, Luebcke had been the target of […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series about national drug policies in various countries around the world. Scotland is in the throes of a devastating drug crisis. Data released this past summer showed that the number of drug-related deaths in 2018 spiked to nearly 1,200—a 27 percent increase over the previous year. Scotland’s drug-related fatality rate is three times higher than that of England and Wales, and is now on par with that of the United States on a per capita basis, according to The Guardian. In an interview, Catriona Matheson, professor in substance use at the […]

The U.S. announced last week that it will begin imposing new tariffs on $7.5 billion in imports from the European Union on Oct. 18. Unless there is a quick settlement to an underlying dispute over plane-manufacturing subsidies, which seems unlikely given that it has dragged on for 15 years, American lovers of single-malt scotch, French wine and cheese, Spanish olive oil and English wool sweaters had better stock up on these and other items imported from Europe. Yet these tariffs aren’t like the others imposed so far under President Donald Trump, and it is premature to assume they signal the […]

On the morning of June 24, 2016, Britons woke up to a new reality—and to what, for many of them, surely felt like a new and unfamiliar country. A day earlier, 52 percent of the U.K. electorate had unexpectedly voted to leave the European Union in a historic referendum, a result that had blindsided most experts. The newspaper headlines that morning reflected the general mood, which could be best described as shellshock. “Brexit Earthquake,” declared The Times of London, succinctly capturing the emotional state of most Remain voters. “Britain breaks with Europe,” was the Financial Times’ more sober take, but […]

It’s easy to take for granted, in this globalized era, that all peoples and nations use a common standard to tell the time. But it wasn’t always this way. Not until the late 19th century did the world finally synchronize its watches. This milestone in multilateral cooperation occurred at a pivotal if unsung gathering, the International Meridian Conference, which convened in Washington, D.C., in October 1884, 135 years ago this month. President Chester A. Arthur had invited the world’s 26 “civilized”—that is, independent—nations to resolve a dilemma that increasingly bedeviled international commerce and communication: namely, the absence of any agreed […]

Is President Emmanuel Macron turning France into the new indispensable nation of European and global politics? Or is he doomed to demonstrate that France is neither necessary nor sufficient to solve the world’s problems? After a string of successes in European Union politics in the late spring and summer, Macron has positioned himself at the center of diplomacy over the Iran nuclear deal and thawing Europe’s ties with Russia. It remains to be seen, however, whether he can actually achieve his objectives. Macron has already gone through a few boom and bust cycles since winning the French presidency in his […]